canonical

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

adj. Of, relating to, or required by canon law.

adj. Of or appearing in the biblical canon.

adj. Conforming to orthodox or well-established rules or patterns, as of procedure.

adj. Of or belonging to a cathedral chapter.

adj. Of or relating to a literary canon: a canonical writer like Keats.

adj. Music Having the form of a canon.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

adj. Present in a canon, religious or otherwise.

adj. According to recognised or orthodox rules.

adj. Stated or used in the most basic and straightforwardly applicable manner.

adj. Prototypical.

adj. In conformity with canon law.

adj. In the form of a canon.

adj. Of or pertaining to an ecclesiastical chapter

adj. In canonical form.

n. The formal robes of a priest

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

Of the nature of or constituting a canon or rule; accepted as a norm or rule: as, canonical writings.

Forming a part of the sacred canon. See canon, 3.

Conformed or conforming to rule; fixed or determined by rule; specifically, regulated by or in accordance with the canons of the church; authorized: as, canonical age; canonical hours.

[Cf. ML. canonicæ vestes, canonicals.] The dress or habit prescribed by canon to be worn by the clergy when they officiate; hence, the prescribed official costume or decoration of any functionary, as, in English usage, the pouch on the gown of an M.D., the coif of a serjeant-at-law, the lambskin on the hood of a B. A., the strings of an Oxford undergraduate, the tippet on a barrister's gown, proctors' and subproctors' tippets, etc.

[8] Which were these twenty-two sacred books of the Old Testament, see the Supplement to the Essay of the Old Testament, p. 25-29, viz. those we call canonical, all excepting the Canticles; but still with this further exception, that the book of apocryphal Esdras be taken into that number instead of our canonical Ezra, which seems to be no more than a later epitome of the other; which two books of Canticles and Ezra it no way appears that our Josephus ever saw.

(Luke and Acts were somehow separated in the textual drift we call the canonical process), which simply does not do enough work in light of the differences in the reception histories of the two texts; such reasons are much harder to come by than is typically thought; (c) Scholars who persist in identifying modern reconstructed readings of Luke-Acts with ancient hermeneutical reading strategies have likely not grasped the way in which the NT authors, early Apologists or Church Fathers actually worked with scripture and have, therefore, distorted hermeneutically the historical worth of their reconstructions.

Somes scholars are ready to cite the non-canonical works as forgeries, but shy away from calling the canonical works forgeries--even thought the same kinds of historical evidences are available for both canonical and non-canonical works being forgeries.

Q: Physicists in the field of quantum cosmology speak of the problem of "frozen time," which arises when you apply quantum theory to Einstein's general theory of relativity using a procedure called canonical quantization.